Crushes That Crush the Mind
by In Smithereens
Summary: In his seventh- year of Hogwarts, Remus realises something interesting about his feelings for his best friend. There will be slash-y romance and inner monologues. Rated T but may turn into M if I get brave enough.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: Once again, I've started a one-shot that has become a chaptered story… RLSB, though nobody knows yet  The song Asking Too Much by Ani Difranco reminds me of Siri and Remy's relationship, so give it a listen if you want.

A nots-so-vague Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling thus I do not own Harry Potter. The title is based on an Ani Difranco song and, as far as I know, I don't own her back catelogue.

"Bored, bored, bored." Each time Sirius said the word he punctuated it with another toss of the tennis ball against the wall. The tennis ball he'd filched from Muggle Studies.

"Why don't you do something, then?" Remus asked, not looking up from his book.

"There isn't anything to do, Remy." He pouted. "Watcha reading?" He sidled closer to his friend and leant his head on the werewolf's shoulder.

"A book."

"I know that, what kind of book?"

"A book that I'm not able to read with you talking to me." Remus closed the book and rolled his eyes.

"What are we going to do now?" Sirius' face was now about an inch away from his friend's. Remus winced at the expression on his face. He had a look of complete focus in his eyes and his mouth was slightly curved up in a maniacal smile.  
This was the look that Sirius got when he had a plan… or when he was hitting on a girl.

"Where are we going? Can we go to Hogsmeade? Can we apparate into London when we get there? Or should we just stay here and find some girls?" Remus winced again. Why did James leave him alone with a rabid Sirius? Stupid deer with his stupid girlfriend… Wait, he liked Lily. Stupid deer with his deluded girlfriend, then. Even Peter was out with his bloody girlfriend. So the two canines were left to their own devices on the rainy Saturday morning. It really was a  
testament to Sirius, that he was actually up at this our (this hour being ten in the morning), and not slumped face down on his bed stinking of cigarettes and firewhiskey.

"We can go to Hogsmeade, if you want. Not London, I don't want any more dealings with the muggle police." He was firm on that point because, as funny as it was, Sirius mingling with muggles was always dangerous. Not because he was a Black, just because, despite taking Muggle Studies for almost five years, he had no knowledge of anything that they saw as general knowledge. And getting him out of a muggle jail cell because he had attacked a phone-box was not something he wanted to repeat. Sirius seemed to be thinking about the same event.

"It was stealing the woman's voice, Remy! You couldn't expect a good Gryffindor to walk on by while deluded people threw themselves into the jaws of the beast." Great, apparently Sirius had been reading about King Arthur again. Remus stretched, enjoying the click of the bones in his back, and stood up.

"I'm not in the mood to discuss muggle technology with you, Pads. Let's get our coats and the map. I don't think it's a Hogsmeade weekend, so we'll have to use the one-eyed witch." Actually, it was a Hogsmeade weekend, but Sirius was generally more attentive when he thought that they were breaking rules.

Twenty minutes later they were walking out of Honeydukes and Sirius was carrying a bag full of sweets. Remus had been reluctant to let him buy that much (even a drunk Sirius was preferable to a Sirius on a sugar-high) but when he had put a whole bagful of chocolate frogs into his basket, Remus forgot all about common sense and just grinned at the thought of mass amounts of chocolate.

"The traitors with girlfriends don't get sweets." Sirius said, biting the head off a sugar mouse, the way he was going at it, he really should have been a cat… at least then he might shut up about 'Minnie' and actually get down to it… Remus had inadvertently got some horrible images in his head which were exacerbated by Sirius waggling his eyebrows at a very pretty but middle-aged witch who passed them in the street. To Remus' annoyance, the witch smiled back and blushed before stopping herself and walking away. Stupid eyebrows. And stupid face with eyebrows on them. And stupid skinny body with stupid face attached to it.

"Can you not do that while I'm in the vicinity?" He asked, putting up the hood of his coat and taking a chocolate frog out of Sirius' shopping bag. He held it tight as it wriggled and bit its legs off, one by one, before devouring its body and head.

"Canines eat the wriggling food," Sirius smiled before dropping a furiously squirming sugar mouse into his jaw with its tail held between his thumb and forefinger.

"Kind of Freudian, though." Remus frowned. Predictably, Sirius didn't get the muggle reference. "Freud was a psychologist." Off Sirius' blank look he continued. "He believed that we repress things from our subconscious (we try not to think about what we really want) and so we have symptoms instead. So he'd say that the way we eat the rodents, we really want to eat Peter."

"Bleurgh, Wormy would taste horrible… All sweat and ham." Sirius wrinkled his nose.

"You've thought about this?"

"No… I know what you all smell like, though. Don't you?"

"You all pretty much smell like dinner when it's a full moon. But friendly dinner that I know I can't eat. What do we smell like, then?"

"Well you know what Wormy smells like, and James smells like dead leaves and pepper and Lily, now." Sirius looked thoughtful… Or how a male model would portray thoughtful.

"And me?" There was a vein sticking out above one of Sirius' eyebrows, a sign that he had sugar racing through his system, and Remus found himself having the weird urge to touch it, to smooth it away.

"You smell like… Cigarettes and chocolate and firewhiskey and new books."

"Lovely." Remus said, sarcastically. "Do you make a point of going around sniffing books and comparing their smells?" Sirius waggled his eyebrows.

"I'm not the bookophile here…" He sang.

"One dream and you're branded for life." Remus grumbled good-naturedly. "I could mention your dreams…"

"What's wrong with my dreams?"

"Freud would have a lot to say about you and Bellatrix." Remus joked… But he actually believed it. Freud would have a lot to say. Sirius' face clouded and Remus internally punched himself, he shouldn't have bought up the Blacks… Especially not the ones who had become Death Eaters. It was the only thing that got Sirius down, no matter how much he joked about it. He took a sugar mouse out of Sirius' bag and popped it in his friend's mouth. Sirius smiled and chewed. Once again, Remus found himself watching the other boy.

That night, Remus lay awake in the dormitory, with the wireless turned down so only his wolf-enhanced hearing could catch the music. Once again, he replayed the day. The day that he had found himself watching Sirius' every movement. He had tried to ignore the obvious conclusion but he couldn't stalk around it. He fancied Sirius Black.


	2. Chapter 2

Author's Note: I only got one review :cries: … Not that I only do this for reviews, I just like them, is all. But I am continuing nonetheless, because I like this pairing! But the problem with being a (mostly) heterosexual female is that I don't know how realistically I can write slash.  
A not-so-vague disclaimer: Caution, hot beverage is hot. And I am not JK Rowling so do not own the Potterverse. But please Ms Rowling, please write us some RLSB that isn't just us reading between the lines of the books and trying to ignore Tonks!

Remus Lupin woke up after a night of fitful sleep and opened the curtains around his bed. He jumped when he saw what was outside them. Sirius was in his boxers. Sirius was in his bloody boxers. Sirius was parading around the room in his bloody boxers. He pulled on a jumper before getting up and tried to avoid looking at him. Sirius noticed.

"Is there something wrong, Remy? You look rather shell-shocked." He asked. Remus didn't even bother wondering where Sirius had learnt the word shell-shocked before speaking.

"Some of us don't enjoy seeing half-naked teenage boys in the morning."

"You've never minded before." Sirius pointed out.

'I've never fancied one of them before.' He thought. But then he wondered. Had he? Had he looked without noticing? Did he secretly rate all of the boys he saw? Was he like this with James and Peter? James came out of the bathroom at this point and Remus thought about it. After a moment he was sure that there was nothing sexual in his feeling for his friend and smiled, relieved. He was only like this with Sirius. He was only gay for Sirius. Wait, was he really gay? What about the girls he had gone out with? Hadn't he fancied them? Yes, he liked girls. He liked girls with long hair and big breasts as much as any of his friends. Perhaps it was just Sirius. Perhaps Sirius was too androgynous and he was  
confused. He noticed that he hadn't spoken in a few minutes.

"I'm going to be late for class." He said as he walked into the bathroom and locked the door, trying to stop the impending panic attack.

The rest of the day passed in a haze of him trying to act normal around Sirius without actually touching him and ignoring his friend's comments about his 'time of the month' coming early. When he reached his final class of the day, Ancient Runes, he flopped down on his chair next to Lily without greeting her.

"You seem about as tired as I feel." She smiled, getting out the text they were supposed to be translating.

"Long night." He said, not wanting to go into details.

"Sorry we left you alone with Sirius yesterday, Heads' stuff." She lied.

"James touching you up in the Prefect office isn't Head's stuff. At least not in the scholastic sense." He joked.

"Nice, good to know that you can still be sarcastic without much sleep."

"It's a gift." He smiled and they got to work. A few minutes passed as they began the translation.

"So, what did you do with Sirius yesterday?" Lily asked.

"Me? I didn't do anything with him." He said quickly, without thinking. "Oh, we went into Hogsmeade."

"Someone's defensive today. What did you do? Shout at the first years again, because I'm sure that they don't take it very seriously."

"I didn't do anything! I was just awake half the night."

"What, did another girl knock Sirius back? Because James told me how pouty he got after I did." She laughed. "Didn't he make a case for using love potions on me, just to prove that I secretly liked him?"

"Yes, and we spent the rest of that night looking them up in the restricted section." He smiled at the memory.

"How did you get into the restricted section at night?" She asked. Crap, he had forgotten that they'd used James' cloak to get in. He smiled.

"Marauders' secrets."

"Ah, so you really mean that you don't want to get James in trouble." She smiled. "So, what was it last night?"

"Nothing, Sirius was fine…. He was good, I mean… No, he was well-behaved. Well actually he wasn't, I let him have too much sugar and he spent a few hours drawing up blueprints so he could break into the Ravenclaw common room. To see a girl, not kill people. Because Sirius isn't like his family. And I doubt that Regulus kills Ravenclaws, anyway, because Voldemort really wouldn't be bothered about that." He babbled for a while before stopping himself. "I was just thinking is all."

"God, Remus. What's gotten into you today? You're babbling like James does when he's caught trying to sneak into the girls' dorm."

"Nothing's the matter. I just don't want to talk about it." He bristled.

"Wait; did something happen between you and Sirius?" Lily lowered her voice.

"What? No. Why would you think that? We're just two straight men who happen to be friends."

"'Two straight men', who cuddle at every opportunity, tend to sleep in the same bed when they're drunk and call each other pretty… Yeah, very straight."

"I don't call Siri pretty. We're just good friends." He repeated himself.

"Seriously, Remus, are you ok?" She looked concerned. He took a deep breath and realised that he would have to tell her, other than the marauders, he spent most of his time with Lily, and she had an annoying sense for these things. He cast a muffulato charm around her before talking.

"Lils, I think I like Sirius. Like I really like him. And I think I have for a while but I didn't notice."

"Really? Because the rest of us have been noticing it since third year." She laughed. When he frowned she motioned for him to continue.

"But Lily, I like girls. Like I really like them. Perhaps Sirius' androgyny is confusing me." He voiced the thoughts that he had been going through for the whole day.

"Who said that you had to like one specific type? Look at me, I proclaimed to hate arrogant idiots and I'm seeing James Potter. The heart wants what the heart wants, Remus." She echoed the muggle sentiment that his mother used to use when people asked why she had married a wizard.

"But he doesn't like me! He likes girls more than he likes oxygen! How am I supposed to act around him?"

"Act how you've always acted. And try to talk to him. If he didn't make a big deal about your 'problem', he won't make a big deal about this."

"That's easy for you to say, you don't fancy your best friend. Your best friend who doesn't fancy you back."

"I wouldn't be so sure of that, Remus." She smiled and took off the muffulato charm. "Now, we really should finish this translation."


End file.
